GIFT   OF 
Irene  Hudson 


1Rot  £ape,  But  1Ret>eUle 


IRot  Uaps,  But  IRevetlle 


BY 


ROBERT  GORDON  ANDERSON 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  AND   LONDON 

3be  fmicfcetbocfcer  press 
1918 


COPYRIGHT,  1918 

BY 
ROBERT  GORDON  ANDERSON 


\ 


C 


Ube  ftnicfterbocfter  f>res0,  flew  H?orft 


Kn  Jftemortam 

LIEUTENANT  W.  L.  M. 


998869 


*Wot  Gaps,  But  "Reveille 


Wot  tTapa,  But 


T  was  a  little  house  on 
a  plain  street.  Yet 
as  I  entered  the  gate 
to-night,  I  closed  it 
gently,  reverently,  for  I  suddenly 
realized  that  the  little  house  had 
the  dignity  of  a  great  mansion,  the 
majesty  of  a  royal  palace. 

A  messenger  had  entered  that 
gate  four  days  before.  He  was 
only  a  little  boy  in  the  blue  West- 
ern Union  uniform,  loitering  along 
the  sidewalk  and  whistling  as  he 
went,  so  little  realizing  the  import 
of  the  message  he  carried — that 


mot  Gaps,  But  IReveille 

message  which  has  been  brought 
to  so  many  homes  by  so  many 
messengers  throughout  the  ages. 

Whistling  still,  he  looked  at  the 
number  on  the  house,  below  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  and  the  service 
flag,  and  then  at  the  address  on  the 
envelope  he  bore. 

A  girl  answered  the  bell.  Trem- 
bling, she  opened  the  yellow  enve- 
lope. The  typewritten  words  gave 
the  name  of  an  aviation  camp  in 
the  far-off  South  and  the  news  that 
a  boy  had  fallen  to  his  death  a  few 
hours  before. 

It  was  her  only  brother  and  she 
blindly  groped  her  way  up  the  stairs 


ii 


IRot  Gaps,  But  IReveille 

to  the  widowed  mother  and  the 
two  younger  sisters  who  had  not 
yet  heard  the  messenger  enter. 

And  the  lights  burned  all  that 
night  in  the  little  house. 

Three  days  later  a  flag-covered 
form  had  been  tenderly  carried 
across  the  threshold  for  the  last 
time. 

All  that  day  the  presence  of  the 
boy  seemed  to  be  with  me.  It  was 
not  because  Death  had  brought  to 
him  that  dignity  which  the  great 
adventure  brings  even  to  a  mean 
life  at  its  end.  There  was  no  glory 
there  that  had  not  been  there 
before. 

13 


mot  Gape,  But  TReveille 

This  young  lieutenant  who  gave 
his  life  for  his  country  needed  no 
idealization.  He  had  all  the  graces 
of  the  youths  of  whom  the  old 
pagans  used  to  say:  "Whom  the 
Gods  love  die  young/' 

But  better  even  than  this  beauti- 
ful proverb  of  the  cultured  Greeks 
was  the  old  colored  mammy's  reply 
to  her  mistress  mourning  over  the 
young  soldier. 

"Why  should  such  a  noble  life 
be  taken  and  the  others  left?"  was 
the  anguished  question. 

And  the  old  colored  woman,  with 
that   childlike    faith    which   is   the 
greatest  of  all,  had  answered: 
'5 


*ttot  Gaps,  But  1Ret>eUle 

"  We  always  pick  the  beautiful 
flowers." 

It  might  have  served  as  an  epitaph 
for  the  young  soldier — his  spirit 
was  as  beautiful  as  it  was  heroic. 

Picture  after  picture  flashes  before 
me.  The  summer  days  when  he 
rose  at  five  and  ran  for  the  tennis 
courts  for  an  hour  of  tennis  before 
the  day's  work,  his  laugh  ringing 
out  as  the  golden  sun  rim  came  up 
over  the  buildings  that  walled  the 
court.  Somehow  he  and  the  Sun 
were  always  "  pals.  " 

And  then  his  keen,  vital  interest 
in  his  job — real  estate.  The  build- 
ing of  homes,  the  selling  of  lots, 
17 


mot  Gaps,  But  IReveHle 

the  management  of  the  office — all 
of  the  day's  work  was  just  as  much 
of  a  game,  a  keen  honest  game,  to 
him  as  the  tennis  at  dawn. 

And  dances  too.  Many  an  even- 
ing we  have  seen  him,  and  very 
handsome  in  his  evening  clothes  he 
looked — slender,  and  erect,  with  a 
spring  in  his  step,  and  a  chuckle  in 
his  voice  that  echoed  the  gleam  in 
his  brown  eye. 

Yes,  he  was  debonair  and  hand- 
some, and  the  girls  and  older  women 
too  couldn't  help  turning  their  heads 
to  look  after  him  when  he  passed. 

But  most  of  his  attentions  were 
showered  on  his  three  sisters,  and 
19 


Wot  Ztaps,  But  TReveille 

his  widowed  mother.  "  Mother  o' 
Mine"  he  called  her — that  brave 
Christian  gentle-woman  with  the 
prematurely  white  hair  and  from 
whom  he  inherited  those  brown 
eyes  and  so  much  of  his  bright 
personality.  Laughingly  he  used  to 
say  he  was  cut  out  for  a  bachelor, 
but  those  who  knew  him  best  al- 
ways believed  the  jest  covered  a 
vow  he  had  made  deep  in  his  heart, 
always  to  look  after  that  mother  and 
the  three  fatherless  girls,  all  younger 
than  he. 

Since  the  great  war  has  come 
home  to  us,  there  has  been  a  spirit- 
ual quickening  in  our  young  men. 


21 


1Rot  Saps,  But  Reveille 

But  even  in  the  days  before  1917 
when  Youth  thought  little  but  of 
sports,  and  dances,  and  theater- 
parties,  and  automobiles,  he  was 
a  Christian  gentleman.  The  boys 
called  him  "white  clean  through" 
— but  isn't  that  after  all  only  their 
unconscious  definition  of  a  Christian 
gentleman  ? 

No,  Death  has  not  brought  a 
glory  to  this  young  life  that  was 
not  his  before.  It  is  easy  to  realize 
it  now.  It  had  been  just  as  with 
the  sunshine,  which  warms  us  as 
we  go  about  our  daily  tasks.  We 
think  of  its  beneficent,  golden  pres- 
ence but  once  in  a  while — until  it 
23 


mot  Gaps,  But  "Reveille 

is  gone.  The  sunshine  of  his  beauti- 
ful spirit  had  been  with  us  all  the 
while,  although  we  did  not  realize 
its  full  beauty  until  taken  from  us. 

And  so  the  gate  closed  behind 
me  to-night  and  I  ascended  the  stairs 
to  the  little  room  where  the  mother 
sat  with  a  letter  in  her  lap,  the  one 
he  had  written  when  he  had  enlisted. 

As  I  clasped  her  hand  in  mine  I 
tried  to  tell  her, — haltingly,  for  her 
grief  almost  blinded  my  own  eyes 
and  choked  my  voice, — of  the  com- 
forting things  I  had  thought  of  in 
the  bright  daylight : — she  was  more 
blessed  than  most  mothers,  twenty- 
six  years  of  his  useful,  beautiful  life 
25 


Wot  Saps,  But  IReveUle 

had  been  hers,  and  now  he  had 
fallen  in  the  service  of  his  country. 
Many  things  I  told  her — the  old, 
old  truths  that  have  been  so  often 
uttered  in  the  homes  of  sorrow  and 
which,  at  least  this  time,  were  all 
so  true. 

Then  she  gave  me  the  letter 
which  she  had  held  all  that  day, 
almost  as  if  the  envelope  con- 
tained the  very  spirit  of  her  boy. 
When  I  read  it  aloud,  as  she  asked 
me  to  do,  I  found  in  it  a  greater 
truth  than  any  I  could  utter. 

It  was  dated  in  June,  written 
while  he  was  away  from  home  and 
just  before  he  had  volunteered,  and 
27 


Wot  (Tape,  But  "Reveille 

in  phrases,  which  for  all  their 
boyishness  or  perhaps  because  of  it, 
were  beautiful,  told  of  the  reasons 
why  he  had  offered  his  life  for  his 
country. 

It  was  rather  for  the  world  he 
offered  his  life,  for  he  said  so  much 
was  at  stake  in  this  struggle — that 
it  was  for  the  whole  future  of  the 
human  race.  Such  phrases  are  im- 
pressive in  a  newspaper  editorial, 
but  how  sublime  they  become  when 
penned  by  a  boy  who  backed  them 
up  with  his  life. 

Towards  the  end  I  found  in  this 
phrase  a  key  to  all  this  life  of  ours 
and  the  life  beyond :  "  We  know, 
29 


IRot  Saps,  But  1Re\>eille 

Mother,  that  Death  is  but  the  door 
to  something  infinitely  better." 

The  wise  men  of  the  ages  could 
have  said  nothing  more. 

Reverently  I  placed  the  letter  in 
her  lap  and  left  her. 

And  if  I  had  ever  doubted,  I 
would  have  found  faith  now,  that 
the  brave-hearted  boy  had  really 
not  left  us.  The  bright  eye  might 
have  been  dimmed,  the  merry  voice 
stilled,  when  at  the  grave  this  after- 
noon those  rifle-volleys  woke  the 
echoes  of  the  Jersey  hills,  and  the 
bugler  played  the  last  beautiful  call 
beside  the  flag-draped  form  before 
it  was  forever  hidden  from  our 
31 


IRot  Saps,  But  "Reveille 

mortal  eyes, — but  somewhere  in 
that  infinitely  better  life  he  wrote 
about  and  in  the  hearts  of  all  who 
ever  knew  him,  his  spirit  still  lives. 

Blow  again,  bugle,  blow  once 
more — not  the  beautiful  but  sorrow- 
ing strains  of  Taps  with  which  we 
laid  him  to  rest — but  the  glorious 
notes  of  a  divine  Reveille  for  one 
who  wakes  to  see  the  Sun — for  one 
who  faces  the  Morning  I 


YB  22908 


998869 


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